Choices, choices: The Lodge has many

MORRISTOWN — Driving on Route 37 between Ogdensburg and Morristown, you can't miss The Lodge Restaurant on the left just before Morristown. It's a restaurant that's been around for years, sometimes open, sometimes not.

It's open again, this time by the Armstrong family. Chris does the bartending; Diane, his wife, is hostess and back-up bartender; son Eric does the cooking.

If you've been there before, you'll recognize the layout — a spacious bar/lounge area with a large open dining room attached. It has been cleaned up and brightened up with a noticeably new paint job.

We began at the bar. Chris seemed right at home, chatting with some people he knew, perfectly hospitable to us newcomers. He pours an honest drink, and at friendly prices.

We looked over the ambitious menu. It was quite extensive, with nearly 50 appetizers and entrées offered by the 20-something chef. Appetizers are in the $6 to $9 range, entrées generally $15 to $19.

Tables were nicely set with black tablecloths under glass and green cloth napkins.

Plates of warm bread were placed at each end of our table as we were seated.

It was difficult to decide from the list of 15 appetizers — creative stuff like clams steamed in wine with sausage; shrimp and spinach dip; escargot in mushroom caps or puff pastry; baked brie, and the list goes on.

Stuffed portobello ($8) was a large portion loaded with Italian ham and spinach and gobs of gooey cheese melted all over it. Lots of great flavors here.

Crab cake ($9) was huge — not a patty or two, but an enormous, amorphous plateful of crabmeat, a bit of filler, drizzled with a not-too-buttery buerre blanc, colorfully dressed up with a small pile of spring mix.

We didn't think this one would work: mussels Gorgonzola ($9), a generous amount of mussels steamed with bacon and garlic, then tossed with Gorgonzola (similar to blue cheese). But it sure did, the liquor of the mussels and probably a little wine combining to make a tasty sauce.

We were disappointed that they were out of the soup of the day, potato shrimp. Instead, we tried a large, handled crock of French onion ($6), nicely presented with a handful of spring mix next to it. The cheese and onions were yummy; the stock was a little watery, could have used some more oomph.

Salads, served nice and cold, on chilled plates, were a combination of iceberg and romaine surrounded cobb-style by little piles of red onion, green peppers, carrots and mandarin oranges.

Dressings are homemade. We particularly enjoyed the creamy, vibrant Thousand Islands. Caesar was a little weak.

You're bound to find an entrée that appeals to you at The Lodge — there are 38 of them, plus five dinner salads and four pizzas. Interesting choices, too, like veal saltimbocca, braised veal shank, grilled chicken and veggie paillards, balsamic maple tilapia, almond-crusted trout, cedar-plank salmon, fettuccini carbonara, tortellini vodka and shrimp rose with spinach and fusilli pasta.

Or if you just want to keep it simple, there's chicken Parmesan, roast chicken, grilled salmon, broiled haddock, shrimp scampi, pasta primavera and broiled Delmonico, strip or porterhouse steaks. Fish fry on Friday, prime rib on Saturday.

Mediterranean pork ($18) was a busy dish, pork "medallions" (really two slabs of pork loin) covered with tomatoes, artichokes and spinach in a lemon-thyme sauce.

The pork was nicely cooked, still a tad pink and quite juicy but a little tough to cut. It was topped with three or four butterflied shrimp that were also a little tough.

Pan-seared salmon ($19) was also busy with mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and asparagus burying the nicely cooked sockeye salmon filet. A lot of flavors going on here.

The Gorgonzola worked with the mussels, so we tried Delmonico Gorgonzola ($19), a healthy (as in large) hunk of hand-trimmed rib-eye topped with melted Gorgonzola and marinated "sun-tanned" peppers (green peppers on their way to ripening to red — green with red stripes.) Our medium-rare steak was cooked just a little under that temperature. Fine with us, better than the other way. The cheese sauce was wonderful.

To sample something from the pasta category, we ordered ravioli Salerno ($19), homemade lobster ravioli in a crab cream sauce. This was a winner, with al dente pillows of ravioli filled with identifiable lobster in a creamy, silky-smooth crab sauce. A real treat for the taste buds.

For dessert, there were two choices. Wine-poached pears ($4) were served cold, pieces scattered on a plate with a good amount of vanilla ice cream. We thought warming the pears would have made more sense.

Rum raisin bread pudding ($4) appeared to be oven-warmed, but was still cold in the middle and could have used a lot more sauce.

Dinner for four, excluding alcoholic beverages, came to $121 before tip.

The wine selection is pretty bare bones, but priced right.

Our waitress was very pleasant but lacked a certain finesse to match the food being offered. A little more training of the servers would certainly benefit the staff, the customers and the restaurant.

Young Chef Eric is off to a good start. His food is very good. His plates are busy, almost too busy at times, occasionally confusing flavors. But if your measure of a good meal is how much you get on your plate, you won't be disappointed with his dinners.

To offer 38 entrees is very ambitious. I don't know how a kitchen can stock the inventory required to produce this menu and manage to keep it all fresh. But that's for someone else to worry about.

The Lodge certainly has the potential to be a viable dining destination in St. Lawrence County.

We wish the Armstrong family all the best in their new endeavor.

TIDBITS

■ Executive Chef Brian Walker, 1844 House on Route 11 between Canton and Potsdam, has introduced his new fall menu with hearty seasonal dishes like duck leg confit cassoulet, apple- and sausage-stuffed pork tenderloin, and hearth stew chicken pie. Be sure to save room for the pumpkin and spice bread pudding in a pool of hot buttered rum sauce.

■ Speaking of desserts, Maxfields in downtown Potsdam has enlisted the services of pastry chef Colin Miner. The night we were there he was whipping up fresh blueberry tartlets, port-poached pears, five-layer chocolate decadence and Southern-style strawberry shortcake, a Southern-style butter cake accompanied by citrus-strawberry compote finished with a hint of coconut chantilly.

You can contact restaurant reviewer Walter Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

The Lodge Restaurant

3792 Route 37

Morristown, NY

375-6646

The Lodge is open under new ownership with an ambitious menu prepared by Chef Eric Armstrong.

HOURS: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday

11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday

APPETIZER PICKS: mussels Gorgonzola, stuffed portobello

ENTRÉE PICKS: Ravioli Salerno, pan-seared salmon, Delmonico Gorgonzola

RATING: 3 and one-half forks